Contraband Makes Up Tijuana Zoo

Published 8:00 pm, Saturday, January 19, 2002

It started with a cage of contraband parrots, a lion taken from an animal smuggler and an abused, albino python seized from a stripper.

And so began Tijuana's accidental zoo.

A city park has assembled a makeshift menagerie of confiscated, abandoned and donated animals that highlights the illicit trade in exotic species flourishing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"They had no place to put confiscated animals, so they brought them here," explains Alejandro Cuellar, assistant operations director at Morelos Park. "We ended up with a zoo by accident."

The first parrots were stored at the park on a temporary basis in 1995, Cuellar said. Things progressed informally from there.

When the police seized a lion cub from the car of an animal smuggler 51/2 years ago, the collection began to take off. Nala, as the lioness is known, is now a featured attraction.

The menagerie, which occupies about 2 acres of the 148-acre park, displays nearly 250 animals, representing 46 species, from an opossum found along a highway in Southern California to a 2-year-old tiger rescued from a Mexican circus.

The park's animal collection has simple enclosures, a haphazard layout and none of the detailed explanatory signs that accompany exhibits in more established zoos.

It's more modest than Tijuana's better known private zoo, which is owned by a horse racing track. And it seems a world away from the state-of-the-art collection of 4,000 animals across the border at the San Diego Zoo, considered to be among the world's finest.

But the workers at the city-run Morelos Park have big dreams. Carla Coss y Leon, the veterinarian who presides over the collection, would like to transform it into an interactive lesson on the dangers of the illegal animal trade.

"I'd like to show people how these animals suffer when they are taken out of their habitat," said Coss y Leon. "I'd like to teach people to show more respect for nature."

It will take a lot of work. The entire Morelos Park, which is named for a hero of the Mexican War of Independence, has 126 municipal employees and an annual budget of $2.5 million. The entrance fee, 50 cents for adults, free for children, doesn't leave much for improvements.

As she speaks, two Tijuana code enforcement officers arrive with two cages filled with a half-dozen green parrots, their feathers a mix of brilliant greens and reds. They were confiscated from a street vendor who had no permit to sell the birds, a protected species in Mexico, said Pedro Espinosa, a supervisory inspector.

Espinosa, who in his spare time writes a column on bullfighting for a Tijuana newspaper, let the street vendor off with a warning. It was a first offense, he said.

The veterinarian will work with wildlife officials to see if the parrots can be returned to their native habitat in southern Mexico. If not, the birds will stay.

Parrots like these are often destined for the United States, where they feed a black market for cut-rate or illegal pets, sometimes ending up at swap meets, said Scott Serena, a wildlife inspector for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who works along the California border.

Throughout the American Southwest, inspectors like Serena try to control the trade, regularly seizing rare and endangered reptiles and birds, and even the occasional large, furry mammal. He knows of at least one white tiger cub found at a border crossing in San Diego.

"They are smuggling to meet a consumer need," he said. "Like any product, you can buy it for less money in Mexico, then smuggle it into the U.S. to undercut people who are importing legally."